Music Pavilion / Lorenz Bachmann + Atelier Void

Text description provided by the architects. A pianist asked us to imagine a space entirely dedicated to music, where she can practice and teach: a quiet and magical space as an integral part of her beautiful garden in the Swiss town of Winterthur.   The single-story music pavilion stands on a simple concrete base. Both, the walls and the pitched roof, are constructed with 12cm thick cross-laminated timber panels – almost like a cardboard model. The steep gable roof rests on both ends of the walls and floats along the eaves in order to completely open the room towards the garden.

The entire building is covered with a continuous dress of thick cement fiber boards, which shimmer in 21 different shades of blue. The shingled facade was developed in collaboration with the architectural office SVNM and installed with the support of many of our friends.

A service room layer, with an entrance, a toilet, and storage space, is hidden in the thickness of the gabled facade towards the courtyard. This allows the music pavilion to be used independently of the residential building. In this intermediate layer, the materials of the shell are exposed: the concrete base and the fresh pinewood of the cross-laminated timber panels become visible.

From the entrance, a small step leads to the music room, which in itself is designed with simple means, and completely opens up towards the garden on both longitudinal sides. The white wooden and textile surfaces reflect the green and blue light of the surroundings. The high gable roof provides enough volume for the sound to unfold and still gives the musicians a feeling of shelter as it reaches down along the eaves almost to eye level.

The music pavilion owes its excellent acoustics to the walls and ceilings made of sound-permeable fabric which covers an acoustic layer with absorbing and reflecting elements.

Building a space for music is one of the most beautiful tasks since sound is an ally to us architects: It needs plenty of air to expand and is sensitive to the surfaces of a space. In order to share this experience with others, the pianist started a small concert series called “Pavillon Bleu”.